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Updated: Aug 18, 2026
An Orthotopic Bladder Cancer Model for Gene Delivery Studies
Published on: December 1, 2013
Expression of the endothelin axis in bladder cancer: relationship to clinicopathologic parameters and long-term
Christian Wülfing1, Elke Eltze, Johann Yamini
1Department of Urology, University of Münster, Albert-Schweitzer Strasse 33, 48129 Münster, Germany. wulfing@uni-muenster.de
Objectives:
Endothelin-1 (ET-1) and its receptors ET(A)R and ET(B)R, referred to as the Endothelin-axis, play an emerging role in cancer. We examined the ET-axis immunohistochemically in invasive bladder cancer.
Methods:
Tumor specimens from 157 patients after cystectomy were stained immunohistochemically for ET-1, ET(A)R and ET(B)R. After semiquantitative analysis the staining results were correlated with clinicopathological parameters and survival rates.
Results:
Overexpression of ET-1, ET(A)R and ET(B)R was identified in 26.8%, 58.8% and 76.9% of cases, respectively. No association with TNM staging and histologic grading was found. However, patients with ET(B)R expression tended to have organ-confined tumors (p=0.16) and no vascular invasion (p=0.09), the latter being statistically significant in the subgroup of G3 tumors (p=0.02). ET(B)R overexpression was associated with favorable disease-free survival (p=0.04).
Conclusions:
The ET-axis is overexpressed in bladder cancer, ET(B)R predominating in this entity and being associated with a more favorable prognosis. Further studies are warranted to elucidate the role of the ET-axis as a molecular target in bladder cancer.
